How did this millionaire’s daughter and former school prefect end up in a car with a convicted crack dealer, his cronies and a boot-load of looted televisions?

Was she so emotionally vulnerable and depressed that she was forced into crime and terrorised by the man she called T Man, the only figure she trusted?

Or was it that the hothoused schoolgirl thrilled to the adrenaline rush of discovering this new world of law-breaking?

The university student and former school prefect insisted that she was a victim, and had been all her life.

Prosecutor Sandy Canavan countered that she had fallen hard for T Man and willingly went along.

In the witness box, the 20-year-old sent out mixed messages.

She looked like a Mallory Towers schoolgirl, and spoke of feeling worthless, depression, suicide attempts, rejection by a boyfriend and being raped by two men.

But she was cool and combative under cross-examination. She didn’t let a remark from the prosecutor pass without a riposte.

But her story is disturbing. Born in Whitechapel and brought up with an elder and younger brother in the Isle of Dogs, the family traded up as her parents’ businesses expanded. They moved to Blackheath, and then to a large house outside Orpington.

The family were described in court as “decent, honest and law-abiding people”, but Laura was not happy. She was “quite close” to her mother, but said she only had “a distant relationship with my father”.

At Newstead Wood, an all-girl grammar school in Bromley, she started a long trail of self-harm, carving the word “fat” into her leg.

After excellent exam results, she moved to St Olave’s in Orpington, the country’s fourth-best performing state school, with four straight As at A level.

The self-doubt remained, but by 17 she had fallen for a slightly younger fellow pupil — her first boyfriend — and they went together to Exeter University, where Laura was reading English and Italian.

In January last year, he dumped her and Laura’s world crumpled. She made six suicide attempts, and ended up in hospital. In July, she claimed she was raped by two men, although she never reported it.

Psychologist Brian McKenzie believes she was suffering from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Under psychiatric care, she met Charlie Fryett, who introduced her to a circle of friends she had never known — men with street, not Christian, names — and a culture of drugs, crime and gangster rap.

Despite being on medication, Laura started drinking, smoking cannabis and ceaselessly messaging her new friend, T Man.

When Charlie ended up in A&E, Laura turned to T Man for support. So on August 8, Laura pulled up in Catford in her Smart car because T Man had asked her to return his charger.

Suddenly, she left behind the law-abiding world in which she had been so unhappy and entered, willingly or otherwise, a new world of her supportive friends.